


Save My Life, Steal My Heart

by Lilbulbdefensesquad



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, Superheroes, the grand unveiling of 'gyro you dumbass'.docx, whats up fellow clowns i finally finished a FIC with an ACTUAL PLOT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 14:15:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20640518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilbulbdefensesquad/pseuds/Lilbulbdefensesquad
Summary: Fenton had expected a lot of things when he decided to be Gizmoduck: criminals, secret identities, a significant pay increase. He hadn't been expecting it to affect his relationship with a certain cranky inventor.





	Save My Life, Steal My Heart

He didn't realize at first that it was the beginning of something, what answering a certain distress signal would start. All he knew was a vaguely defined “situation" in the park. He wasn't at all expecting to see Gyro Gearloose sitting ten feet above the ground in an oak tree.

“Dr. Gearloose?” He asked, surprise making him unable to muster the voice he usually used as Gizmoduck.

“Ugh.” Gyro said it with so much disdain it might as well have been it’s own emotion. “What are you doing here?”

“I'm responding to a distress signal.” He looked at Gyro, clinging to the branch like it was a life raft and he was about to drown. “…are you it? Are you stuck?”

Gyro's feathers bristled, standing on end like the fur of an angry cat. “NO! I am not stuck! I can get down whenever I please!”

“…so why don't you?”

Gyro gave him an unimpressed glare. “Because of _her_, genius.”

Before Fenton could ask who exactly ‘her’ was, his question was answered by a figure below running directly into the tree, causing it to shudder and for leaves to fall. At first glance, it looked like a normal woman, but a closer look revealed more facts. Like that she was definitely a robot.

“Yours?”

“Duh.”

“Went haywire?”

“I prefer the term ‘unstable'"

Fenton looked down again.

“Why is she wearing a maid's uniform?”

“It made sense at the time!” Gyro snapped defensively. “The point is I have this under control and certainly don’t need your help, so you can go…I don't know, rescue people from a burning building.”

“You aren't-" he cut himself off with a frustrated groan. It would be pointless anyway; arguing with Gyro was like arguing with a brick wall. So, he ignored the chicken's assertion that he “had it under control" and lowered himself enough to be able to fight Gyro's creation.

She turned her wild, metal eyes on him and lunged faster than he thought physically possible. He dodged, barely, and she hurtled past him, nearly slamming into another tree before turning herself around. She was as adept at dodging as he was, managing to evade his every attack. And, despite Gyro's claim that he didn't need help, the inventor just clung to his branch and shouted down completely useless advice.

She leapt forward, saw blades spinning (why those were necessary was a mystery to Fenton) and that's when he saw his opportunity. He ducked under her arm and grabbed it from behind, yanking it from its socket. She whirled around, but clearly the loss of her limb damaged her systems, because it was slower than the others had been. He grabbed her, fumbling around the exposed wires in arm before hitting the off switch. She fell like a ragdoll.

Gyro picked his way down the tree until he was standing next to Fenton, and hefted the limp robot up.

“That's the last time I try to revise my old inventions,” Gyro said, mostly to himself rather than Fenton. He looked up at Fenton with something like gratitude on his face for just a split second.

But, before Fenton could decide whether or not he had imagined it, Gyro left without a word, leaving Fenton alone in the middle of the park.

* * *

The second time, it started as standard routine. He got a distress signal on the Gizmoduck suit while on patrol, he flew to its coordinates to deal with the problem. Business as usual. Well, as usual as business could be while you were a superhero.

It was in the middle of a fairly busy street, and spectators openly gawked at the giant mechanic monstrosity tearing its way down the street, leaving, for some reason, letters in its wake. Fenton definitely saw more than one person angling up their phone in hopes of getting decent footage of the fight. Though, when you lived in Duckburg, this sort of thing became more like free entertainment rather than a serious threat.

And facing down the robot was, unsurprisingly, Gyro. He held some kind of raygun, shooting at the robotic menace, burning its metal and then dodging to the side.

“Gy- uh, esteemed Dr. Gearloose who I have not met before, what are you doing?” His ‘hero voice’ started to falter near the end of his sentence, exasperation and fear bleeding through.

“What does it look like I'm doing?” Gyro snapped.

The robot took another step forward and Fenton wheeled himself out of the way, dragging Gyro as he went.

Fenton had been working with Gyro for so long that he had could usually tell an invention’s function just by looking at it. This one, however, stumped him. It had a large, rectangular body with a slit in the front that vaguely reminded Fenton of a mouth. It marched towards them on stiff limbs that shook the pavement.

“What in the world is that thing?” Fenton asked.

“Mail sorter.”

Well, that explained the letters.

“Does it have an off switch?”

Gyro snapped his fingers like a thought had just occurred to him. “That's what I forgot when I was building it!”

“So there's no way to shut it down?”

Realization dawned on Gyro, with fear at its heels. “No.”

Okay. There was no way to shut it off. That was fine. This was fine. He would just have to do the second best thing: damage control.

“Everyone clear the streets!” he shouted.

Gyro seemed to catch on to what Fenton was trying to do.

“Move it! I have a laser and I am not afraid to use it!” Gyro yelled. He waved it wildly at the sea of onlookers, which was all the encouragement they needed to start leaving in droves.

The street was finally clear and the robot took another earthquake-inducing step.

“If only there was a way to get to it from the inside. The inner workings are rather vulnerable,” Gyro mused.

An idea took root in Fenton's mind, growing and solidifying as he looked at the raygun held loosely in Gyro's hand.

“Illumination!” he exclaimed, startling Gyro. “I'll be needing this, thank you,” he quipped, grabbing the gun from Gyro and flying directly in front of the haywire robot, ignoring the chicken's outraged screeches.

He wedged his fingers into the slit in the front of the robot, wrenching it apart with all the strength the Gizmosuit could muster. The screeching of metal was torture to his ears, but it did what he needed; created an opening big enough for the nozzle of the gun to fit. He forced it in and squeezed the trigger. There was the sound of circuitry and wires being destroyed from within the metal, and the robot tipped forward and collapsed to the asphalt like a house of cards in the wind.

He lowered himself to the ground next to Gyro. The laser gun was snatched from his hand with an unnecessary but customary amount of rudeness from Gyro.

They both stared at the destroyed robot for a couple seconds, not entirely sure where to go from there. Gyro tucked the raygun back into his vest, which seemed to defy the logical confines of his pockets, but it wouldn't really surprise Fenton if he found out Gyro had sewn pocket dimensions into his clothes so he could hold onto more things.

“You didn't do an awful job,” Gyro said in a tone that was almost like he was giving a compliment.

Before Fenton could puzzle out if it was a Gyronian version of a compliment or just a non-insult, the distress signal in the Gizmoduck suit beeped. The Beagle Boys were robbing a bank. Again. Couldn't they at least be original with their crimes?

Gyro raised an expectant eyebrow. “Well? Don’t you have some hero-ing to do?”

Fenton blinked, feeling oddly off-kilter about this whole conversation. “Uh- yep! Bye Dr. Gearloose! Rockets, activate.”

He was in the sky the second the command left his mouth, leaving Gyro a small green speck on the ground.

* * *

Fenton was used to Gyro arriving at the lab before him. Hearing Gyro rush around, darting from various projects and then to his desk and then back again was familiar.  
What wasn't familiar was the second desk standing parallel to Gyro's. Instead of working on his projects like he usually did, Gyro was standing in front of the mysterious extra desk, carefully arranging something Fenton couldn't see with his back to the duck.

“Dr. Gearloose?”

The single word was enough to make Gyro jump like he had heard a gunshot. He whirled to face Fenton, face switching between annoyance and surprise.

“What are you doing here?” Apparently Gyro had settled on annoyance. “Work doesn't start for half hour!”

“Traffic was good so I got here early,” Fenton said, opting not to comment that Gyro was here early as well. He tried to peer around Gyro to catch a glimpse of whatever was behind him. “What's the second desk for?”

“I-um.” Instead of explaining, Gyro awkwardly shuffled aside to reveal the desk fully covered in supplies. A pencil cup sat in one corner and a little Darkwing Duck figurine in the opposite one. A computer sat in the center with a pack of sticky notes next to it. And, in front of it all like the general of an office supplies army, was a name plate with ‘Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera’ inscribed on it.

“It's yours,” Gyro said, kind of unnecessarily. Fenton took a step closer to get a better look.

“I got the figurine from Launchpad. You like that kiddie shit, right? I di—”

“This is INCREDIBLE!” he shouted, unintentionally interrupting Gyro. “Thank you!” He flung himself around Gyro in a hug before his mind could catch up with his body and realized too late that the action might not be welcomed.

Gyro stiffened before awkwardly patting Fenton on the head and slowly wriggling out of the embrace. “Calm down, I put a computer on a desk, I didn't cure cancer.”

Fenton let go and Gyro immediately dropped his gaze to the floor like it contained the secrets of the universe, absently tapping a staccato beat against the desk behind him.

“You probably should have been out here in the first place.”

Fenton's mind, spinning with ideas about how to utilize his new workspace, ground to a halt at Gyro's words. He looked at Gyro, who was determinedly looking everywhere but Fenton. He slowly repeated the words in his mind. He was pretty sure it was a vague apology for sticking him in the bathroom.

Gyro started to speak before Fenton could decide whether or not he should accept the unspoken apology, or even draw attention to it at all. “I think I'll go. . .work, now. Science things. Um, robots.”

He was clearly scrabbling for some kind of professional façade, but failing. It was kind of cute.

Wait, what?

While he was still trying to figure out if he had actually described Gyro as cute, the alarm alerting him it was time for his patrol as Gizmoduck went off and Gyro was waving him away while barely looking up from the pile of projects threatening to consume his desk. Fenton shouted the code word and as he zipped to the world above their underwater lab, and he put all thoughts about Gyro being attractive to the back of his head to be dissected later.

_

Two hours later, Fenton came back from his patrol, already buzzing with hundreds, no, _thousands_ of ideas

“Dr. Gearloose I-" Fenton began, ready to utilize his new workspace as much as possible.

“You can cut it with the Dr. Gearloose shit,” Gyro said, barely looking up from the security drone he was rewiring. Gyro spared him a glance and, seeing that Fenton was a little more than confused, started to elaborate. “Mr. McDuck has made us equals, we might as well be on a first-name basis.”

It made sense, but still… “On one condition.”

Gyro looked up with furrowed brows behind his glasses and a combination of confusion and annoyance on his features.

“You have to call me by my first name too.”  
Gyro didn't look terribly surprised at his condition as he turned back to the wiring. “Not much of a problem. What do you want, Fenton?”

* * *

The third time it happened, Fenton was starting to see a pattern forming.

“—haywire robot flying a hundred feet above the city, witnesses say it's holding someone hostage,” Roxanne Featherly was reporting on Fenton's TV. The code words were out of his mouth before Roxanne's sentence left hers.

He was already sure who the hostage was, and the sight greeting him when he arrived at the scene just confirmed it.

The source of the problem was a flying robot that looked a bit like a drone with arms. It was using aforementioned arms to hold Gyro upside down by his ankle. His hat had already fallen to the street below and his glasses threatened to join them.

“No worries, citizen, Gizmoduck--"

“Cut the shtick, Fenton,” Gyro interrupted his well-rehearsed spiel. “We're the only people up here."

“Uh, right.” He let his ‘hero voice’ disappear into the wind.

He moved to free Gyro's ankle from it's mechanical prison, but three other arms shot out as soon as he got close. He grabbed one and yanked while the other two banged uselessly against the Gizmoduck suit. The arm in his hands came out with a shower of sparks that had Gyro covering himself with his arms.

“Would you watch it?” the chicken snapped.

“Uh, trying to save your life here!”

“Well, save it faster!”

He gave the same treatment to the other two arms still darting around. Immediately another three limbs shot out in a very unwelcomed but familiar manner.

“Are you kid- how many arms does this have?”

Gyro counted on his fingers for a second. “Thirty?”

He gave Gyro his best are-you-kidding-me look through his visor, which was met with an apathetic shrug.

“Okay, plan B then.” If only he had a plan B.

He pushed the arms desperately clawing at him to one side, grateful for the armor around him protecting his skin from the nasty claw-like appendages at the end of each metal limb. He then set his attention on the arm still holding Gyro. He wrapped one arm around the scientist before pulling harshly on the arm still holding onto Gyro's ankle for dear life. It came off the robot with the sound of tearing wires, leaving it still dangling from Gyro like an ugly Christmas ornament. The chicken pried it from his leg and threw it to the ground like a fisherman would toss a too-small fish. Fenton resisted the urge to say something about littering as he adjusted Gyro's placement in his arms to a bridal style position, hopefully preventing any possible future falls.

The robot, while the two were distracted, had shot up and now hovered ten feet above them like an over-sized fly.

“I still need to deactivate it,” Gyro said. He turned to face Fenton. “Fly me up there.”

“I. . .don’t think that's a good idea. Why don't I put you down somewhere and then shut it off myself?”

“Take me up there or I'll jump up there,“ Gyro threatened.

He started to point out how that was unfathomable in every way, but his words died when he saw Gyro's face. He had his ‘I’m not giving up on this no matter what you say' face on. It was a look Fenton was used to seeing. So, with a resigned sigh, he reluctantly flew towards the robot.

As soon as they were close enough, Gyro started shift in his arms. Before Fenton could fully register what was happening, Gyro had leapt away from him and onto the robot. He scrabbled for purchase until he was more or less hanging off it with his entire lower body dangling in midair. The arms snapped at Gyro, but didn't deter him in the slightest. Fenton fended them off as well as he could so Gyro could work.

After a couple minutes, Gyro managed to pry open a panel and started to sort through the wires within. He pulled a pair of pliers out of…somewhere and prepared to cut a blue wire.  
Fenton realized a second too late what would happen if Gyro shut the drone down while he was still on it, but before he said anything, Gyro snipped the wire.

The robot, with Gyro still clinging to it, plummeted.

Fenton reached out a second too late, his fingers grasping nothing but air. With his heart beating in his ears, he flew down after Gyro. A constant refrain of _no no no oh God no_ looped through his head as he raced against gravity.

He managed to grab the collar of Gyro's shirt and the chicken gagged as the fabric dug into his throat. He pulled Gyro into the previously abandoned bridal style position. Miraculously, his glasses were still on his face, albeit a little crooked. The robot fell to the street below with a loud crash of metal against asphalt.

For two beats they were silent and grateful that this hadn’t ended worse.

“In retrospect, I should have thought that through more,” Gyro said breathlessly. They both pretended his voice wasn't shaking.

“Y-yeah. That was almost a disaster.”

Fenton slowly lowered them to the ground, where a group of spectators and a police car were waiting. He set Gyro on his feet, growing concerned when the other winced slightly at putting weight on the ankle he'd been held up by. Fenton supposed it hadn’t been noticeable since the other hadn't actually been standing through the whole ordeal. But now…

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Gyro huffed, looking mildly annoyed at Fenton's concern. They stood awkwardly for a couple seconds. “Thank you. For…that.”

Before Fenton could say anything, Gyro had already started to walk off, limping slightly.  
Fenton didn't mention it when Gyro came into work the next morning, still favoring that ankle.

* * *

The fourth time wasn't even Gyro's fault, technically. He just happened to be caught in the crossfire.

The Beagle Boys had branched out from their usual bank-robbing ways and decided to hold a grocery store captive. Why a grocery store of all places was beyond Fenton, but that wasn't so relevant in the grand scheme of things. What mattered was that innocent people could get hurt, and he needed to stop it.

The sight he got when he arrived was this: a dozen Beagle Boys with various weaponry - three of whom were emptying out all the cash registers into cliché burlap sacks with big dollar signs on them – and roughly ten hostages, including four employees.

The second the Beagle Boys caught sight of him, their efforts to steal the cash doubled, and two charged at him. One was immediately hit with a pie to the face, and the second got a hit to the head that knocked him out cold. Two down, ten to go.

A third rushed at him wielding a sledgehammer, and met the business end of his own weapon a second later.

Four more attacked, all meeting the same fate as their brothers.

The three still raiding the registers realized that there was no way they were going to win this confrontation, and started trying to escape with the bulging sacks of money weighing them down. He sent all three flying into a wall before they knew what hit them ( Ooh that was a good pun- he'd have to remember that for later.)

The next Beagle was left tied up by a rope hanging conveniently on a hook nearby. It was out of place for a normal grocery store, but he wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth, or question an author's lack of creativity.

He, unfortunately, forgot about the last Beagle lurking in the store. He also, equally unfortunately, forgot that Beagle's had one smart brother in the bunch.

The last Beagle Boy lunged at him from behind, lashing out with a heavily modified knife-like weapon that reminded him of something Gyro would make if he lived up to the rumors regarding his evilness. Fenton realized the attack a second too late, too late to stop the surprisingly sharp weapon from cutting through the Gizmoduck's suit, straight to his skin. He lashed out with his good arm, letting it extend until the Beagle Boy was pinned against the wall, and then dropping him just hard enough to knock the criminal out. It was only after he called the police to put the Beagle Boys in jail - at least until they broke out again - that he noticed Gyro, who'd been one of the shoppers held captive.

The inventor approached him with all the care of someone who got held hostage on a regular basis. Then again, when your inventions turned on you almost every day, you probably got used to being in peril.

“Gizmodork,” Gyro greeted casually, the name sounding like more of a affectionate nickname than an insult.

“Dr. Gearloose,” he said, unsure of whether the first name basis extended to his superhero-sona as well. Better if it didn't, so that the already expansive list of people who knew his identity wouldn't grow any longer. “It was a pleasure seeing you, but I should um, probably go bandage my arm and repair the suit so-"

“My apartment's around the block,” Gyro interrupted. “You could go there instead of flying willy-nilly all over the city while you’re still injured.”

Fenton reeled, mind uncomprehending for two reasons.

The first was that Gyro was willingly inviting Fenton to where he lived. Admittedly though, since Gyro's change of behavior, it wasn't nearly as unthinkable as it would have been six months ago.

The second reason was a little harder to pin down; it wasn't a demand. It was, unlike most things Gyro said, an offer. Up to Fenton to accept or not.

By the time he had - well, not exactly _gotten over_ his shock, but at least started to manage it – Gyro had started to walk away, without sparing a glance to see if Fenton was following him.

Fenton made his decision.  
_

The first thing Fenton noticed was the cats. At least six of them throughout Gyro's admittedly small apartment. One immediately started weaving between Gyro's legs like it was trying to trip him.

The second thing he noticed was that it was, frankly, a giant mess. Blueprints, tools, and various snack wrappers covered the floor. The kitchen area in the corner had even more wrappers and dishes stacked on every available surface. He rolled over an empty bag of potato chips, the sound of it crumpling ringing out loudly.

“Take off the suit while I find the first aid kit it's…around here somewhere.” Gyro commanded. As he spoke, Lil Bulb scaled its way up Gyro's legs and was now perched on his shoulder.

Fenton let the suit fall to pieces around him. Gyro rooted through one of his kitchen cabinets, which quickly turned into all of them being thrown open before finding his first aid kit.

“Y’know,” Fenton couldn't help but pipe up “there’s a Junior Woodchuck rule about keeping your first aid kit--"

“-In a sufficient and memorable place,” Gyro finished with a roll of his eyes as he pushed Fenton onto the couch and taking a seat himself.

Fenton blinked, confounded at the fact that Gyro had casually recited a Junior Woodchuck rule. And correctly at that.

Gyro’s mind also seemed to catch up with his words. “If you tell anyone, I will incinerate you before you can even say ‘Blatherskite.’” The threat might have been more intimidating if one of the cats hadn't decided to make Gyro's lap its new napping spot, butting gently against the buttons of its owner's shirt.

It was so ridiculous that Fenton had to laugh “I won't. It's just- you never struck me as the scouting type.”

“My dad was the troop leader, he made me go because it was the only way he could insure I didn't burn the house down while he was gone.” Gyro started cleaning Fenton's cut with an ease learned from injuring himself on the regular.

“There was no way your dad was scared you would burn your house down,” Fenton said. Another cat started sniffing at him, and then Gyro, who had started to shift through the first aid kit again.

“Eh. It happened three consecutive times before I was ten, so he had reasonable cause to be worried.”

He couldn't help but laugh a second time. Gyro gave him a half-hearted glare, but huffed a soft laugh under his breath. Fenton's heart skipped for half a second. Genuine, non-maniacal laughter from Gyro was rare, and being able to draw it out of the inventor felt like an achievement somehow.

Gyro unspooled the bandages as the conversation drifted to other topics, bouncing from their childhoods to their favorite movies to passionate debates about who was better: Pecksya or Newton and finally to restaurants.

“Please, nothing compares to IHop,” Gyro said, having finished bandaging Fenton's arm somewhere around his lengthy speech about which movie had the best representation regarding robots.

“Family restaurants are way better than big chain restaurants! There's more care put into the food!” Fenton argued, the debate bordering on ridiculous, but giving it his all nonetheless. “I'll have to take you sometime to prove it to you.”

It occurred to him a second after the words left his mouth that what he was proposing sounding very similar to a date.

Gyro didn't react the way he expected.

“I'll take you up on that, if only to make you eat your words.”

Before Fenton could really consider whether or not his former boss had just accepted to go on a quasi-date with him, his phone chimed, alerting him that he needed to leave soon if he wanted to be home in time for dinner with his M'Ma.

“I need to go,” he said, genuinely disappointed. Gyro's face, surprisingly, seemed to mirror his own emotions. “But this really was fantastic, and I'll…see you at work tomorrow.”

He left, unable to stop the smile spreading over his beak as he reflected over the afternoon.

* * *

It had been two weeks on the dot since the unprompted afternoon spent in Gyro's apartment, and things were actually going well with Gyro, something that was surprising and unsurprising at the same time. While genuine camaraderie had formed, they didn't talk about the almost-offer of a not-quite date. But, Fenton had accepted that he was, in fact, attracted to the other scientist.

_Thunk_.

The object that appeared in the corner of his eyes pulled him from his thoughts. It was mug – his mug, to be exact – filled to the brim with coffee. Gyro, the only person who could have put it there since Lil Bulb was too small and Manny didn't have hands, was holding his own mug.

“Thanks,” Fenton said, wrapping his fingers around the handle.

Gyro blinked and paused less than a foot away from Fenton, apparently not expecting the small gesture of kindness to be acknowledged. “Right. Well, I figured I owed you, since you've saved my life so often.”

“Gyro it's my job-"

“Nope,” he interrupted. “I owe you, and I know how to pay you back.”

“Really?” That, at least, distracted him enough to not continue the argument.

“Dinner. You take me to that restaurant you were talking about, and I'll pay.” Despite how unruffled Gyro's voice and face were, his hands twitched, absentmindedly twirling a pencil on Fenton's desk between his fingers.

Oh. He was _nervous_ about asking Fenton out. It was the first time in Fenton's memory that he saw Gyro nervous. Panicked or anxious, yes. But not nervous.

“Sounds great,” he said. “But on one condition.”

Gyro looked at him, surprise written on his features.

“I get to do this.” And with that, he pulled Gyro down to his height and kissed him.

Gyro didn't react immediately, out of surprise more than anything else, but once his brain started functioning again he kissed back eagerly. Very eagerly.

“Not a problem,” Gyro said when they pulled back for breath, before pressing their beaks together a second a time, and then a third and fourth and until time stopped meaning anything at all.

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this months ago (in like February) got writers block for a while, and then wrote a whopping two thousand words last night at like 1am. Moral of the story is that the full moon gave me writing powers apparently.


End file.
